When it comes to online retail, a successful operation is all about adapting to trends. Platforms, purchasing habits, customer engagement – all of these different elements are evolving rapidly, and being able to cater to these demographics effectively and quickly is crucial.

And the better the customer experience is, the more likely they are to come back.

In this vein, having a smooth mobile checkout is integral for your business. As trends demonstrate, the future of retail is in mobile.

A 2018 report states that 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase using their mobile device in the last 6 months…and that number is poised to grow.

So how do you capitalize on this emerging market? And how do you ensure a smooth checkout process each time?

Here are some elements that every checkout experience should have for some food for thought. Use these as a mark against your own checkout process and see how you stack up and ways you can improve the customer journey for your operation.

1) Allow for guest checkout

The main thing to remember about mobile checkout is that it’s all about convenience and speed, rather than cross-selling or adding bells and whistles. You want customers to move through the forms easily, fill out their information and most importantly, stay on the checkout page. You don’t want them to navigate away or frustrate them.

So instead of coaxing them to make an account before purchasing, enable guest checkout. You can leave breadcrumbs for encouragement such as “Make an account to check out faster next time,” but otherwise, checking out as guests enables them to purchase faster.

2) Reinforce security

People are always nervous about putting in their card details and it can be especially so for mobile users since they are not always able to see each element of the page. There are some easy ways to alleviate this:

• Have security certificates on top of the checkout page, or visible in a corner somewhere
• Offer secure and alternative payment options such as Paypal

Features such as secure carts that can help push your conversion rate over, especially with first-time customers.

By offering secure payment alternatives such as Paypal and other payment gateways, users can feel safe knowing they can make purchases without their information being stolen.

3) Focus on the tiny UX/UI details

User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design are important in designing a checkout experience.

There are a lot of different elements that go into a good checkout page, such as:

• wide text boxes to let people easily tap into each one without pressing the wrong one
• CTA (call-to-action) buttons to allow users to confirm their payment such as ‘pay now’ or ‘buy now’
• if it is a multi-p